Anna Sorokin, who was convicted of defrauding New York banks and hotels out of $2.75m, inspiring the Netflix hit Inventing Anna, told CNN on Wednesday she wants a “second chance.”
“I served my time and I feel like I should deserve a second opportunity,” Sorokin told CNN Tonight host Jake Tapper from her apartment in New York City, where she is under house arrest as she faces deportation.
“I was younger and I learned from my mistakes,” she said elsewhere in the interview about her time as “Anna Delvey,” a fictitious persona she used to live the life of a wealthy socialite and art world insider in New York and around the world.
In February 2021, Sorokin finished a three-year stint in prison and was turned over to US immigration authorities, who are now seeking to deport her to Germany.
Sorokin, who was convicted in 2019 of defrauding New York banks, hotels, and others of $2.75m, alternated between apology and defence in her interview.
“I feel so sorry for a lot of the choices I’ve made,” she said. “I also feel like I’ve learned so much and grew as a person.”
At the same time, she snapped at Tapper for saying she stole money from friends or pretended to be a German heiress.
She said she hopes to fight her deportation to German and underlying criminal conviction to “prove people wrong.”
“I have to stand for something,” she said. “I hope people will recognise it.”
During the interview, Sorokin was pictured with her ankle monitor, and sat in front of one of her paitings, depicting a faux newspaper called the “Delvey Crimes.”
The former fraudster told CNN she hopes to focus on making art and producing a podcast.
As for Inventing Anna, the Netflix show inspired by her story, Sorokin said she’d hardly watched, but complained actress Julia Garner didn’t quite capture her distinctive accent. Rather, Sorokin said the accent sounded a bit like an earlier time in her life, when she was traveling frequently around the world.
“I don’t think I sound like it,” she said.
